Steam's Big Picture beta available now

There has been talk surrounding Valve's Big Picture mode for Steam for a while now, but it is finally up and running - allowing Steam users to hook up their computers to their HDTVs and sit in the living room playing PC games. While cynics might refer to it as 'a bigger font' it's actually quite a bit more impressive than that, reworking the entire Steam interface to allow controller navigation - including a web browser with a controller designed 'lotus' key input.

If you want to check out Big Picture mode for yourself, you can grab the beta by going to Steam's Settings and opting into the current Steam Beta Update. Once Steam has restarted, you should see Big Picture in the top right corner - click it and you're away! It works pretty well, although as a beta don't be too surprised that some of the kinks have yet to be worked out - read more about Big Picture on the official site. Embedded below is the trailer for Big Picture, if you'd rather watch someone explain the feature instead of reading it - and of course you can also check it out in our videos library!



Using a controller, for example, is great for simple navigation through your games and the Steam store and the lotus keypad is easy to use - though it takes some getting used to. Navigating the web though - particularly signing into places like Twitter and Facebook - needs some work, as it's currently a bit of a mess. I have zero idea how to select radio buttons, or change the field you are attempting to type into - if you can figure it out, please let me know.




The Steam Overlay, as you can see, has its own reworking in Big Picture and it is as simple to use as the standard mode - in fact, the only significant problems I have with Big Picture are - a) the Xbox 360 controller is an annoying, twitchy piece of junk and I hate it and b) I'd need about 4 metres of HDMI cable to connect my computer to the TV. I honestly don't know how to resolve these issues. Is there a decent 360 controller on the market? Is the PS3 controller really as difficult to set up on a PC as it appears? Should I build a new PC?

I feel like I kind of should build a new PC - Big Picture + XBMC would be a dream come true compared to the codec hassles and sometimes finicky nature of both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 when it comes to media and playing games. What do you think - do you have any plans for building a sweet couch gaming PC now Big Picture is available? Let us know in the comments below!